Much has been written about the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, but as Frederick Kempe argues here, the Berlin Crisis of 1961 was more decisive in shaping the Cold War—and more perilous. It was in that hot summer that the Berlin Wall was constructed, and within two months, American and Soviet fighting men and tanks stood arrayed against each other, only yards apart. In this "gripping, well-researched, and thought-provoking book with many lessons for today" (Henry Kissinger), Kempe uncovers President Kennedy's and Premier Khrushchev's miscommunications and misreadings of each other and finds that the Wall went up largely because Kennedy allowed it.

"Berlin 1961 takes us to Ground Zero of the Cold War. Reading these pages, you feel as if you are standing at Checkpoint Charlie, amid the brutal tension of a divided Berlin."—Washington Post